It's been a long good while since a new motor driver chip has come on the market that has been simple and powerful. The real trouble is that there's been a few, but unfortunately, they've been all surface-mount chips. That means they're hard to work with. Small. Hard to solder. GRRR.

Fortunately, SparkFun has helped filling this need by taking the Toshiba TB6612FNG motor driver, and mounting it on a convenient carrier board, making it easy to use. This chip is no slouch - it can deliver power up to 15V @ 1.2A (ok, up to 3.2A peak pulses), while only creating a half-ohm voltage drop. That's great!

Like any motor driver, you need to tell it what to do, and this is generally done by using two signals (IN1 and IN2). Using a combination of high/low input signals, you are able to set the motor in one of 4 states:

Clockwise rotation

Counter-clockwise rotation

Shorted out (brakes the motor so it's hard to spin)

Coast (no power applied)

This unit has a pair of drivers, so you can control two motors independently, and control the speed of each by a PWM input pin. Toggle this pin up to 100kHz to control the on/off signals going to each motor, which gives a nice, smooth speed control effect.

23220

Pololu is known for some killer motor driver technology. They're bringing their mojo to the Arduino! Dual robust VNH5019 motor drivers take 5.5 to 24 V and punch out a continuous 12 A (30 A peak) per motor, or a continuous 24 A (60 A peak) to a single motor connected to both channels.